To enter the world of indigenous Colombia, one must first sit down and meditate. This is what Diana Magaloni and Julia Burtenshaw, director and curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, (LACMA) did when designing the exhibition. The universe in the palm of your hands,Thoughts and Splendors of Indigenous Colombiawhich is on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Beyond the presentation of some 400 pieces, including about 200 in gold, notably from the Museo del Oro and the Unidad de Artes y Otras Collecionnes de la Banco de la Republica, it is the indigenous thought of Colombia that the exhibition invites us to share.
Also, to mount it, the commissioners had to put aside the reflexes of museologists learned on the benches of the university. For example, the pieces in the exhibition are not dated, so as to give them back, at the very moment when we look at them, all their meaning. The professionals have established, in collaboration with members of the Arhuaco community, “a new frame of reference for the archaeological collections of Colombia at LACMA, which places the works in new affective and functional contexts”, writes Diana Magaloni in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition. “Thus, our categories, our taxonomies and our conceptions of these works and the peoples who created them, even when they have been elaborated with good intentions, perpetuate, even reproduce these structures which prevent any authentic encounter between the indigenous world of Americas and ours”.
Thus, rather than a detailed statement of the age of the pieces, their composition, the identity of their creator and the reasons surrounding this creative act, it is a “connection” that the designers of the exhibition wish to create. . Failing to be able to bring this connection to life in the heart of the Colombian forest, the staging uses fragments of documentary, projected on the walls, to promote this feeling.
Let’s talk about gold, for example. A precious metal that made the eyes of the conquistadors shine with covetousness, its purity has no value for the indigenous people of Colombia. It is its beauty that is above all sought after, in the finely chiseled jewels that are exhibited here. Works of art, fine masks or gracefully shaped chest ornaments testify to the sophisticated goldsmith techniques developed in Colombia before the arrival of Europeans.
“Due to the current unrest, imbalance and instability, the material [l’or] hides. We don’t work on it anymore. THE moms say he went into hiding,” says Diomedes Izquierdo Mejia, an Arhuaco archaeologist, about the current state of the precious metal.
Patience, patience
To tame the universe of the Arhuaco community and grasp its codes, one must first “observe with patience”, note Diana Magaloni and Julia Burtenshaw, who met the press on Tuesday at the Museum.
In this regard, the fourteen watercolors on paper, drawn in 2020 by Confucio Hernandez Makuritofe, entitled The annual cycle of a wild caimo tree, are evocative. They show the continual transformations of the tree and its relations with its visitors.
In the cosmogony of several indigenous peoples of South America, “the material world was created and is maintained to this day by a delicate process of deliberate reflection. The responsibility for this process lies with the elders and spiritual leaders, the pensadores (thinkers), who spend whole days sitting on a banquito (small bench) in order to engage in dialogue with the vital forces,” the exhibition reads. .
Throughout the exhibition, benches invite visitors to learn about it.